From the diary of a madman

I scribbled this in between Rummy 500 games, and it reflects my take on the current thought in physics on the shape of the local spacetime bubble we live in (click for big). And remember: this is where we live, our home, our reality. There are also, no doubt, other spacetime bubbles, both separate from ours, and so far apart they can't ever be seen. And that too is our environment, our reality - our entire Universe might be just a bubble in sea of other bubbles in a higher dimension. But let's just focus on our Universe, our bubble.

In the picture above, 1. represents our expanding spacetime bubble, our Universe. From a conception point of infinite density and almost zero space, no time, all was born in an "explosion", then vast inflation. This expansion continues, and on the largest of scales, all matter is spreading apart. Give or take a trillion years and our Universe will be a vast bubble of emptiness, with all matter/energy degraded to it's least energetic, least dense form. Nothingness.

Simultaneously, in 2. above, as a subset of 1. gravity creates vast spiral depressions in spacetime, and at the largest scales these depressions encompass billions and billions of galaxies, and perhaps even more. Everything falling down, always orbiting something deeper in the hole. From the Earth we live perched on the edge of a Universal whirlpool, swirling ever further down - this is the inherent reality to all spacetime we could ever exist in. And remember, that with increasing gravity is slowing time, and thus time stops somewhere in our reality. But where....

Leading to 1a., purely hypothetical, which shows that at every black hole - and they get ever bigger and bigger - a new Universe is "Big Banged" out the other side, and thus expanding and creating stars and other black holes and galaxies and thus other Universes that "Big Bang" out of these black holes, so and such forever. This, too, is our reality, our environment, what we exist in. We are part of it all.

2a. is just a more basic illustration of the gravity well we're all and everything perched within, and you can think of it exactly like a great whirlpool in the ocean, and we're all spinning along at some level of it. Except of course this whirlpool exists at all points, all times in space. It's everywhere and everything. Falling.

The middle section graphs some divergent relationships - and that's what our reality, our very existence is all about: Imbalances. We exist because of imperfections, flaws in a perfect design. Because one side is hotter than another, because one little bit of space is denser than another, because there were basic imbalances at all levels of reality as we "Big Banged" these imbalances expanded as the Universe itself expanded, and became our reality of Motion - imbalance creates motion, as hot seeks the cold, less dense seeks the dense, high frequency seeks low... everything seeks the perfection of balance, I suppose. But if we ever get there, it will be in that trillion years hence when all matter/energy is spread out, completely and evenly throughout a vastly larger Universe. Nothingness. So who needs perfection? Embrace the imperfect, as it is the very reason we're here.

And thus we reach the end of a 40 minute quickie. I don't claim to propose anything new with this, just a summation of what I've gathered is current thought on "our reality".

Which, again, is just one of many. It's mind boggling to me when I consider the truth of our existence - so ever small, and yet, here we are, talking about it. Big big.

You're welcome, local star systems

Next time you wonder what we're doing here, what's the point, what could we ever accomplish, rest easy! Look above at all the great TV programming we're sharing with all the stars and planets around us. And we're just giving it away, for free, out of the kindness of our big, big hearts. 

And for a laugh, imagine some three eyed alien waiting for the next episode of The Brady Bunch and if the Bunch will find Cindy and Bobby, lost in the Grand Canyon. Spoiler Alert ZOG: They do. :(

You spin me right round

Deep thoughts Brahs and Brahettes: There's no "up" in space, no "down". These directional words are only meaningful in the presence of gravity, and strong gravity at that (for instance, these ISS astronauts are still technically within Earth's gravity, and would fall back to Earth eventually if not corrected for). 

So, in the last two posts, quite simply I think, I've shown how gravity is necessary for time, and for orientation. Think about the 4 dimensions we live in: 1. Up/down, 2. Back/Forward, 3. Side/side, and 4, and newest, Time. 

All are defined by gravity. Hmm...

Upside down you're turning me

Pic from the ISS, our last bastion of space travel, and a near complete waste of time and resources - little will ever be accomplished on the ISS other than possibly space endurance records and the like. In most other regards, it's fairly useless. A symbol, pretty much.


Also, and I suspect I will be going on and on and on about this in the days to come, but here's a thought: Everything you see exists in the past. Everything - even if you look at your own hand. Why? Well, the only way we can see something is by light striking it (or coming from it) and then traveling to our eyes. In that travel, time passes. It's minuscule, microscopic to be sure, but real. And the effect gets more pronounced with more distance AND/OR less gravity. Gravity slows down time - weird, but true.


And thus, to conclude for now, quite literally, this guy floating around on the ISS playing with his beverages, is in THE FUTURE.... that is, his internal clock is going ever so slightly faster than ours.

Ponder that for awhile and let it sink in. It's a rather revolutionary concept.

Caught between the Moon and Sun

Lookee real close here - that's a sunspot, and an International Space Station (Click for big). Did you know that a full solar eclipse is entirely co-incidental? That is, a full solar eclipse depends on three factors: The size of the moon, the size of the sun, and the distance between the eclipser and the eclipsee. That is, the moon, right now, is the perfect size at the perfect spot to completely eclipse the Sun, perfectly. In a couple of hundred million years, as the moon moves ever further away, full solar eclipses will no longer be available on Earth. As a matter of fact, we - right now - might be one of the only, if not the only, spots in our galaxy that experiences full solar eclipses. Cool, huh? Maybe it was Jeebus.

Anyways, theme:

ISS in front of the moon. What's big is small, what's small is big. Size is 100% relative.

Both these photos were taken by the same guy - Theirry Legault. And he got both pics in the span of a few weeks, traveling the world to do so. Ultra cool!

Precious Little Snowflakes

As I've said many times in many ways, the closer you look at something, the weirder it gets. In fact, when you focus on anything directly, it's always weird - you ever really look at your ears, for instance? Anyways, some fun lovin' scientists - in the name of Science - started collecting snowflakes under a high powered electron microscope, and here are the results. They've got a website! In the picture of above, we're going smaller and smaller. But we can always go smaller still:

Go Saints! The Seahawks don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

 Further magnification - and gosh darn, it's hard not see these pictures and think someone was building these structures. They look incredibly man-made like.

Speaking of - look at this incredible microscopic ice crystal. Damn! As you can see in the chart below, with decreasing temperates/water saturation, the crystals take a variety of different shapes:

 Which leads me to my conclusion: Ice 9. Remember that? Read "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut if not. One of my favorite - perhaps THE favorite - book ever. But in sooth, there are different types of ice. Imagine a world where ice is as hard as granite, and methane flows like water - no need to imagine, as it really exists: Titan. Sirens of.

Getting Smaller All The Time

 Two recent examples of insect sized robots - flying ones at that. The limiting factor as of now to how small these types of robots can get is the power supply - in fact, power and batteries are the limiting factors in all kinds of different areas these days.


Now, in the scale of things, even these robots are big - still "macro". In fact, it's likely the first major breakthroughs will be with insect sized robots, and specifically, robots acting in a swarm.

The model to these swarm bots are ants, not people. Like ants, any one of these robots is not terribly bright, capable of only a few basic tasks. But link them up, and allow them to communicate certain types of information, and the swarm becomes much smarter than the sum of the parts - this is how ants and bees and other types of swarm lifeforms are so successful. In fact, they can be so successful that it might be helpful not to think of the individuals as individuals, but rather as nerves, or sensor points, to a larger organism - the swarm itself.


But this is still very big. Scientists are hard at work getting these robots into your body:

And no doubt, robots that can navigate your blood stream, and, for example, help clean out blocked arteries, will be very useful. But here, still too big.

Now we're getting somewhere - check out these four little robots operating at microscopic levels. But this arena - nanobots and the like - is still brand new, and there's not much real to show you yet. Just a matter of time though.

But we are beginning to build things at the microscopic level - simple machines for now, like so:

A working machine at the molecular level. At this juncture, most such nanomachines are toys for scientists, proofs of concept. But it won't be long before we actually have machines working - nonstop - at the microscopic level, and once you wrap your mind around the possibilities this would open, you'll quickly understand how revolutionary this will be: An entire new reality to conquer, really. And we'll conquer it, or die trying.

I find this to be a big deal on a metaphysical level, since our reality is divided neatly (in our minds) between what we can see with our eyes, and what we can't. For example, we're all made of atoms, but you'll never see an atom with your own eyes, and thus, that level of reality is conceptual, whereas the solid objects we see around us (composed of billions and billions of atoms) are the reality we can interact with. Same for things that are too big - like galactic clusters. It's beyond our minds.

Well, with these types of machines, it might be a true "technology as magic" moment - imagine something being created from thin air, or surfaces covered with atomic robots cleaning every inch of material, or weapons you breathe in, and then they kill you from inside your own blood.

It's all coming! Be prepared.

11 Love

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME?
GAME OVER! NEXT!

Seriously: A ping pong playing robot. Fairly impressive.

In fact, this entire storyline is impressive: Mankind, in a dialectic feedback loop, will create ever more impressive robots AND robot minds, no doubt till the day one of these creations does experience real sentience - and at that point, will these robots be alive?

And a key definition of life is self-preservation. Do the math from there.

It might all work out awesomely, with humanity re-creating itself in more robotic forms; or it could end with HK's patrolling the skies 24/7, shooting at the rat like mammals who still inhabit the bombed out tunnels and underground structures. Who knows? But rest assured, we - you and me and all of us - are going to find out whether you like it or not. Nothing can stop this progress. So, as with many (most) things: Might as well enjoy the ride.

I wanna sexx U up

Say hello to the latest creepy invention of Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro - who excels at making creepy robots. It's his "thing", I suspect. Go on and look it up. This is a "telepresence" robot, meaning, for example, I could be talking to you through the robot, and the robot's facial expressions would match mine. The obvious end to this technology are surrogates, wherein copies of me would speak to copies of you, while the original is safely stored in a Cyro-Ark, bound for Vega. Or something to that effect! And of course, there would be plenty of opportunities to either A. Confuse the copy with the original, or B. The copy thinks it's the original.


Now, Prof. Ishiguro is not selling or presenting any of his robotic creations as sex toys. But... c'mon! It's technology 101: If it can be used for sex or to provide titillation, that will be the first widespread use of the technology; in this same rule, if it can be used for killing or destruction, that will be the first use of the technology. Sex and Death - they power everything.


It's going to be a wondrous Tomorrow....

Pimpin' is actually fairly easy, thanks for asking

If you lack or have learned to lose a certain sense of shame, pimpin' is certainly easy. Here's an expert:

Mike Damone: I mean don't just walk in. You move across the room. And you don't talk to her. You use your face. You use your body. You use everything. That's what I do. I mean I just send out this vibe and I have personally found that women do respond. I mean, something happens.
Mark Ratner: Well, naturally something happens. I mean, you put the vibe out to 30 million chicks, something is gonna happen.
Mike Damone: That's the idea, Rat. That's the attitude.
Mark Ratner: The attitude?
Mike Damone: Yeah! The attitude dictates that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin'. Now when you got that, then you have the attitude. 

 Clearly, Riker's got the attitude, the moves. Or should I say, had:

ComiCon represent!

It doesn't have to make sense

It's from the intertube - it doesn't have to make sense. Which made me think: The absurd is funny because our brains recognize that it doesn't make sense and we don't have to try and figure it out, and this provides a great relief to our brain since it spends so many countless hours trying to figure out why all kinds of stupid stuff is happening (stupid stuff that is probably absurd yet we won't accept that). This relief translates as laughter, which has other beneficial effects as well - indeed, one could view laughter as the mind self-medicating.

Not to say we can't derive meaning from the reality around us, just that, rather, perhaps we need not try and find meaning in everything. Like the bumper sticker says, sometimes shit happens, and that's all that can really be gleaned from the event. 

Two Knights and a Knighting

Say what you will about the Queen, and royalty in general, but she knows how to handle a Bat'Leth pretty well. Look at that forearm strength! A real WARRIOR!

Consider, much like with Sir Alec Guinness, these two Knights of the Empire will probably be best remembered as wizards, starship captains, or mutants - all creative descendants of Tolkien.

The Traveler

"Odin the Traveler", (1886) by Georg Van Rosen.  Santa Claus like, but also like the hobo down at the 7-11, picking through trash. OR, of course, a distinguished old gentleman on a stroll through the countryside.

"Odin disguised as a Traveler", (1914) Artist Unknown. Note the awesome, Adidas like kicks.  This should of course remind you very much of the representation of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies, and book (to a degree). Tolkien made no bones about borrowing from all kinds of source Myths for his characters, background, language, etc. He was an awesome scholar after all and one can assume knew everything there was to know about the subject of Northern European (including England) Myth.

Also too:

- Internet, 2011, no other idea. Kinda cool, kinda cheesy.

I often bad mouth religions and I feel pretty strongly anti-religious in most regards, it's true. But I love Myth, and if it weren't for the Holy Rollers and Assorted Flandererssss.... I'd like Christianity just fine. As a myth, as a collection of tales from older times? Love it.

Infallibile word of God from on High and any who speak or go against it deserve to burn in everlasting HELLFIRE? Fuck off!

And as far as Myth goes, Norse mythology is some of the best. So much tragedy!

Dispatches from Gondolin

What I find fascinating about this somewhat cheesy drawing: JRR Tolkien basically invented these genres of Swords and Sorcerers, Dungeons and Dragons, Worlds of Warcraft, etc - the entire Fantasy genre, for all tents and porpoises. And this genre spawned, also,  the Sci-fi we know  and love today: Star Wars is nothing but Fantasy with robots and spaceships rather than swords and horseback. 

Tolkien set out to do just this - create a new mythology, made up of bits and pieces of all sorts of existing myths. He succeeded extravagantly, I'd say. He and L.Ron have to go down as two of the greatest writers ever if for no other reason than the numbers of people who swear allegiance to the fake religions, histories, and stories they created. One of them on a bet; the other during a lifetime of deep scholarship and research. Who's to say who'll be more successful in the end?

The end - what's that, anyways? Just a new beginning, always. Nothing ends, just transforms into other things, somethings else to play a part on this grand stage of pretending - ACTING!


Also, too: The Geo-Thermal is kicking ass.

Also also as well: You can try and justify those giant eagles in LOTR all you want. They are literal Deux ex Machinas flying in to save the day, only when it makes little difference to do so.

Muninn went a'courtin'

Or it might be Huginn. I get those two mixed up all the time. Regardless, watch your garbage pails - you know how ravens like trash.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

An amusing sub-category of "Funny Animal Pictures" is the topic of "Animals Smoking". It's usually monkey related, but lookee here at these bold crows. Caaaa- HACK!- aaaw!

Also:

Smoking sure looks cool, right? This l'il guy sure seems to think so - though it's possible this is an undeclared Photoshop. Judge for yourself.

Gorilla Art

This is Koko. She knows thousands of words in sign language, understands English but cannot speak it, had a kitten, lost a kitten, had a sadz.... she was born July 4, 1971, and still ticking. As you can see, she's also quite the artist. Here's a Koko original, and truly tell me you would know it was painted by a gorilla, and not some dude in a beret:

Pretty, eh?

Me and my Monkey

Everyone needs at least one person who's got their back. L'il Fido here's hooked up. Ain't it the cutest thing?!

Bulls in Crochet

Some recent, and brief, guerrilla art by Olek (one name only!). Guerrilla art is the best art, since by definition it is not co-opted. I also appreciate, from a symbolic perspective, the association of bulls and money-Mammon. Makes sense!

Just another dog in the wall

Real pic. Fido here done got his head stuck in a hole in the wall, and needed the fire department to rescue him. Which they did, and he's fine, happy story, ladaladalada!


The Lesson (there's always a lesson): Don't enter something in which you cannot get out of easily. In fact, always have an exit plan in mind when entering.

Schrodinger's Choice

You've heard of this cat, yes? The thought experiment goes like this: At the quantum level, it is impossible to both determine the location, speed, and spin of an electron, photon, and every other fundamental particle. It is as if they exist/don't exist simultaneously, and it is only until they are "observed" - that is, they interact with our world, like by colliding with something, or are measured.  Thus, in this cat in a quantum box, the fate of the cat is determined by the quantum interaction with a particle - and some kind of poison. If the particle is X, the poison is released, and the cat dies. If the particle is instead Y, the cat lives. Thus the crux of the thought experiment - if the cat's life depends on this quantum crystallization, and it is you opening the box that causes it, can you really ever say if the cat is alive or dead before you open the box? Or only until you observe the cat with your own eyes? Or something like that.

The idea being, in an extremely solipsistic way, that it's hard to say anything actually exists until we observe it - and by we, I mean our solid reality, consisting of everything you know. From a quantum mechanics perspective, the answer is: sorta?

But anyways, that's not the point here. Rather, this idea I've been toying with for months now, Schrodinger's Choice: This thought experiment imagines that you create your future reality with every choice you make/don't make, and thus, if you are choosing unwisely, you are creating literal "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios for yourself, and thus a cascade of bad luck, misfortune, and otherwise funked up flows.

You come to an intersection on a busy rush hour night; going straight leads you one way, into a possible shortcut but with traffic complications; the other is a longer route, but a single lane prone to slow drivers and back ups. To choose either way, in this scenario, is to write one future, and to send another into oblivion, though in fact it existed only in your mind. The choice of one creates a traffic jam in the direction you choose, and the other way frees up as Gramps finally takes the left turn. Every choice you make instantly becomes the wrong one, and the more frustrated and angry you get, the more pronounced this occurrence becomes. That's your Schrodinger's Choice, and I'll spoil the answer: There's no winning if you play, so don't play.

Take that to any game you encounter.

Also, consider this a corollary to the Constanza Strategy, which is to choose the opposite of what you want to choose, thus attempting some metaphysical jujitsu on the bad mojo that's got you all gummed up.

Also, too. Remember "The Far Side"? I had forgotten about it, now, for years. I used to love it, I mean, seriously. I had all the books and read them endlessly. I love the absurd! Since, for sooth, our entire reality is completely and utterly absurd, and it's only our monkey minds that give it any semblance of sense. Anyways, enjoy!

Beggin' for Jah

Why dontchya toss me a wee biscuit for Jah now Mon, won't ya?!

Jah-Jahhhhh, Jah-Jah-Jahhhhhh.

I heard a reggae song recently that had about three words in the whole song, since they just kept repeating "Jah". Jah seems like a cool god, as far as fictitious, made up, fairy tale gods go (all of 'em). Better music at least.

This Tube Nosed Fruit Bat finds your ideas intriguing

and wishes to subscribe to your newsletter.


Just this one, though. The rest of 'em think you're crazy.

Art of the Deal

I spent WAAAY too long today searching for this picture on the intertubes, only to fail. :( I have it at home, and thus my overzealous attempt to find it in the cyberwild. 80's kid, 80's kid olan mills, laser olan mills miami vice, etc.... My googlefu failed, and for that I feel as if I failed myself. After all, how did I first find it if not from the interweb?

But seriously, most of the time it takes me no time at all to find a good pic - I've got mountainloads already stored, and need only search my archives. Or, to the internet. But every once in awhile, one certain idea will grab me and I will search, and search, and search. And certainly, sometimes the failed search turns up something else. But still, the lesson: Know when to hold them, know when to fold them.

Also, too:
80's Sleestack. Make it stick, Google!

The last 30 years of society, explained

To be clear, it's all Reagan's fault. Well, he's the symbol of it, the guy who led the charge. But it's really of course the thousands and thousands of minions and acolytes who made it happen. But this is not a political post, but rather, cultural/fashion. Just don't forget the political background.

My thesis: It has been technology which has driven ALL major societal changes throughout the history of humanity. Fire, stone tools, metal tools, etc. What is new, recently, however, is the pace - we're on the upcurve of an exponential explosion in technology since the Industrial Revolution, but really and for my purposes, kicking in with the arrival of the computer.

The 80's are my focus here, as it is when several trends crystallized and gained strength, and now dominate nearly every aspect of American culture today. Everything 80's is pretty much in the picture above. But let me paint this picture for you - and yes, I spent about a half hour thinking about this, so I'm sure it's 100% correct.

For a long time, American society progressed and changed slowly. You could look at pics of businessmen in the 50's and and 20's and while the fashion's changed, the same air of formality, of tradition, permeated all.

Then came the first stirrings of the counterculture, inspired by jazz and blues and other African American creations, these trends first gained heavy traction in the culture with the Beats - Kerouac, Ginsberg, and all the rest. The Beats helped shaped/became the Hippies in short order, and this was a mainstream development. Again, look at the differences in clothing and behaviors from 1953 to 1963 to see what monumental changes took place at this time. And the key, parallel technology development of this time? The TV. That was the key.

The 1970's continued all of these trends, but now with a corresponding backlash from "conservatives" of every stripe - from sexism to racism to new ageism, here began our continuing war of "Punch the Hippy". It's very much still going on ("SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!" is as succinct a summary of this trend as possible). However, the larger forces of culture and technology continued to move on, with the perfect storm of the 1980's, in general.

Fashionwise, it's easy enough to see the progression from 60's hippies to 70's rhinestones and plaid to 80's day glo and pastels, and even working its way into 90's grunge and hip hop. I think we've stabilized the craziness on the fashion front since the 2000's, but maybe I'm still too close to the time period, and can't see it (Note! I realized in 1993 that fashion is idiotic by looking at pictures of myself from 1984; I vowed to try and dress in a "timeless" fashion from then on, though what is and is not timeless is of course hard to say at the time. My rule of thumb: The plainer the better. Always.)

But it's the technology that's key. Several huge developments in the 70's paved the way for quite an upheaval in American culture: Cable TV, and computers/video games, and portable music players. Each of these new technologies allowed an individual to create a shell - a world they no longer had to leave (or leave rarely). You could find out what kids in California were doing with ease now; you could hear the music that's popular in London overnight; you could play the same game you once played in an arcade (social setting) at home. And thus, the segmentation/fragmentation of culture - which again, is only continuing.

With all specializations - and that's what a segmentation of culture is to me - you have more extremes. Music can be more extreme; fashion, games, everything leads to more extremes, since you have people so focused on the particular topic, AND there's now a nearly real time feedback loop where you can build on the works of others very quickly.

The feedback loop only gets more extreme as well - the Web is the best example of this effect ever invented. And I suspect that too will only continue, as technology will soon allow our brains direct access to a web of other brains, leading no doubt to a cyborg future.

Till then, and only as an observation - I make no value judgments about any of this - we continue on these same paths built for us by poor black  jazz musicians and Jewish poets and a generation of  kids who now have it baked in their bones that the future is always more, faster, bigger, etc.

These trends all congealed around the Reagan Revolution, which led to a MASSIVE increase in the mindset of American consumer culture, leading directly to the outsourcing of most American manufacturing, and the subsequent destruction of economic fundamentals of the country. America exists today as a strip mall, supplied by China, populated by poor people deep in debt, brainwashed to believe their misery will go away if they can only get the newest flat screen tv, or whatever.


Until the dam breaks (external event), might as well enjoy the ride.

A Start Too Favre

Under the theory that the first three years of any new decade is actually part of the previous decade, culturally (Consider: 1963 was part of what we consider the 50's; 73 was the 60's; 83 was the 70's leading us to), Brett Favre is an 80's QB, as this poster from the era can attest. And it really is quite remarkable he has played so long, so continuously. Enough to hold almost every major QB record. His start tonight against the Bears on the frozen tundra of Gopher Field was inspiring, in fact. But the 80's were a long time ago, and all things comes to an end.

As my friend L.E.S.T.E.R. relates, entropy rules us all, and we, and everything we could ever know, are destined for ever greater chaos. As with all truths, accept this, realize it, and move on. Any and all facts are but operating conditions for this game of Life.